Bilawal turns up the heat on Nawaz

Says PPP will take to streets if four demands are not fulfilled by Dec 27

KARACHI: Upping the ante against the PML-N government, Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has warned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of “consequences if he fails to meet our four demands by December 27”.

While addressing a ‘Salam-i-Shuhada rally’ in Karachi in October, Bilawal had called upon the federal government to: i) revive the national security committee of parliament; ii) accept the bill presented by the PPP on the Panama Papers controversy in the National Assembly; iii) implement the resolutions passed at the recent multiparty conference on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; and iv) appoint a full-time foreign minister.



“There will be no option left [for us] but to take to the streets if the demands are not fulfilled,” Bilawal said while talking to media representatives at the Bilawal House on Tuesday.

“The government has been given enough time to meet our demands,” he said and added that the Prime minister had no courage to say on the floor of the National Assembly that the probe into the Panama leaks issue should begin from him.

“We are going to implement our four demands in the country, as we are the only national, federal political force of this country.”

“[Nawaz] Sharif is a very intelligent man. He successfully hid his wealth and his fortune which he has stolen from this country and from the people of Pakistan until 2016 [when the Panama Papers broke the truth].”

Bilawal said: “The prime minister has jeopardised his children’s political future by buying properties overseas in their name... he is shameless”.

“If he is conceding that he is not the country’s democratically elected prime minister but Amir-ul-Momineen who is answerable to no one, then after December 27, we will teach him how to do opposition and make him answerable to our demands,” Bilawal said.

The PPP chairman said the first demand was to reconstitute the joint parliamentary committee on national security as it existed during the time when Yousuf Raza Gilani was the prime minister.

Bilawal claimed that he first raised this demand during the all parties conference on Kashmir, and the government and opposition parties agreed over it. “But the government does not implement his demand.”

He claimed that the law and order situation has worsened in Punjab and remarked, “I’m worried that in the coming days the situation will further deteriorate.”



The second demand, according to Bilawal, was democratic accountability into the Panamagate scandal, which “can only be investigated by adopting the PPP-drafted bill on the Panama Papers”.

About CPEC, Bilawal said the project was Asif Ali Zardari’s brainchild and added that the third demand was about implementing the APC proposals on the CPEC.

“It is our simple demand to implement the decisions taken in the APC on the CPEC, so we can ensure democratic accountability of the country’s economy.”

The fourth and the last demand was appointing a full-time foreign minister, he said and added that the PPP also wanted democratic accountability of the country’s foreign policy.

“We want that accountability, and the first step for this is for us to get a foreign minister,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2016.